NBA Finals TV: “Game of Thrones” or Game 5 (and how to keep up with both)

Sunday night TV will showcase an epic clash of warring factions, teasing viewers with hopes of either a satisfying ending or a shocking outcome.

That matchup, of course, is the NBA Finals Game 5 Heat at Spurs vs. the Season 4 finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Rather see the potential end of Tyrion Lannister instead of the end of Miami? A 39-year old mom from Philadelphia roaming the AT&T Center will make sure fans don’t miss a thing

Her name is Melissa Rosenthal Brenner? She’s the NBA Senior Vice President of Digital Media.

With a small crew on-site and much larger staff at the New Jersey NBA offices, Brenner & company will direct 625 million NBA followers to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Flipagram, The Skimm and Sina/Tencent (in China) for their hoops fix.

It’s the biggest use of social media in the NBA’s history. Who needs to watch the game on TV?

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Let’s say you stepped away during Game 4 and missed Kawhi Leonard’s follow-thru slam late in the second quarter. Brenner’s team, using Twitter’s new video player, sends out the video with the hashtag #NBARapidRelay, just about under a minute after the play happens.

“It’s one thing to tell a fan ‘Hey! Tony Parker hit a three (point goal)’ but it’s quite another thing to show the clip,” Brenner said. “It’s amazing to me that the same kid in Mumbai, in Johannesburg or in Moscow in real time watch that same highlight of Tony Parker or Tim Duncan or LeBron James.”

“Whether it’s seeing the game on TV or through our Game Time app or League Pass subscription, fans have such access that it doesn’t seem so long ago that I didn’t.”

That “lack of access” thinking goes back to Brenner’s Philadelphia childhood, growing up loving the 76ers with Julius Erving, Moses Malone and then Charles Barkley.

“I grew up as huge basketball fan in Philadelphia. That fall (November 1984) Michael Jordan and Barkley were going to meet,” Brenner said. “I wanted to see the game. My friends at school said that Michael Jordan was, by far, a better player than Charles.”

“My parents didn’t subscribe to PRISM (the 76ers’ cable TV home at the time). I was too young to stay up until 11 p.m. to watch the local news. I had to read about it the next day in the newspaper.”

“I keep that (in mind) when I tell my kids stories that they hate hearing about the old days,” Brenner added. “I’m a passionate fan, but passionate about the technology that can really make the experience of being a fan so much better.”

Brenner grew up as a 76ers’ fan. After 18 years with the NBA (she was hired in 1997 when NBA TV and NBA.com started), Brenner says she’s neutral in her fandom.

“Now that I work for the league, I generally like all of them. To prove it, my five-year-old son went to school with a Spurs jersey and Miami Heat shorts.”

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The NBA Digital numbers breakdown is as staggering as the Spurs’ Game 3 & 4 stats.

625 million: The number of fans & followers of the NBA across social media. That includes followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and China’s micro-blogging site Sina and Internet service portal Tencent.

6.4 billion page views: The amount of digital consumption of NBA content across all NBA platforms in the 2014 playoffs (not including the Final).

30 million: The number of tweets sent during the 2014 playoffs (not including the Finals). In Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, the Miami-Indiana matchup generated 1.6 million tweets.

10 million: The number of NBA Twitter followers who will get at least 500 tweets sent to them during each Finals game.

73.5 million: The number of tweets just about the NBA Finals since June 5 (as of late Saturday, June 14, Central time)

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Consumption patterns have changed. While the Finals games have been the most-viewed program on TV each night they’ve aired, ratings have shrunk dramatically over 20 years.

Network and advertisers call live sporting events “DVR proof” but the Finals have to slug it for viewers straying to other original broadcast and cable TV programming, streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime) and video gaming.

If the NBA is worried about viewership, its’ online following more than likely makes up for any loss.

“If the NBA fan base represented a country, it would be the third most populated country on the face of the earth behind China and India,” Brenner said. “We have so many resources at our fingertips to produce great content in real time for our fans whenever, (and on) whatever platform are fans are on.”

Any doubt about that last statement was erased when a caller phoned into KTKR-AM 760′s “The Show with Geoff Sheen” on Friday. The caller was a local man who has business in China who wore his Spurs gear on the flight over there.

The caller told Sheen about a large Spurs fan base in China, total strangers asking him questions about the players and chanting “Go Spurs Go” at him. Plus, the caller said he had no problems watching the games on TV at all.

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Brenner reminds herself and the NBA Digital crew is that storytelling is the key thing to remember when doing their jobs.

“The great thing about our league is that we have 30 teams, over 400 players (with) a third of them on Twitter; there’s an abundance of stories to tell and it’s our job to dig the really good ones,” Brenner said.

Stories range from players and teams documenting their travels or what they do in their own backyards.

Sometime, the little things are the ones that trend best

“The best have been LeBron James and his family,” Brenner said. “He posted about his honeymoon, his kids, he Instagrammed the kids’ first day of school. All these thing make a global superstar relatable; the things we do every day. Fans really connect with that.”

International fans even had chances to ask the players questions from a new partnership between the NBA and Facebook.

Using Facebook Live TV, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, Ray Allen and LeBron James all took part in the Q&A from fans. The questions were not the ones grizzled, sports-only reporters would ask. The ranged from what sort of music they listen to during warm-ups to Tony Parker asked if speaks French to Boris Diaw on the bench during game time (yes, he does),

“Not that you guys in the media don’t do a great job with your questions but hearing fans ask Dwyane Wade what music he listens to get motivated before a game or asking LeBron when he first dunked (eighth grade), It gave fans a feel connected to the games and players to the process in a way that hasn’t happened before.”

“You could tell from hearing the players answer their questions they were enthusiastic with it as well,” Brenner said. “The players have walked out saying wow, that was great,” Brenner said.